It's not about score and statistics only. Almost everyone told after the Fiorentina match that we kept the win thanx to Buffon, so..
oh, and what would have happened if fiorentina would have won ... would you be saying now, that they only won because of frey ? did forget some of his remarkable saves ? so what ? they have frey, we got buffon and both did good saves to prevent goals. it is not like we had an unfair advantage or something.
if fiorentina won we could've said "damn, this prandelli is a loser coach ... they only won because of frey!"""
But Ranieri started to act like before, sit behind and give looooong passes to the opponent's defenders, you can't win time like that.
wow, i am sad that i did not see that game obviously ... how funny must that have been, seeing ranieri run onto the pitch and playing long balls ...
i mean, he is old and stuff, i would not have thought he could still run on the pitch and do that ...
wait a minute ... i did see the fiorentina match and did not see ranieri enter the game !
so in YOUR reality, does their exist the possibility that ranieri did not exactly say "just clear the ball high towards the opponents half" ?
there are situations in football where it is better for the defender to just blast it high away ... that are situations where the defender is under pressure and does not have the time (or technical skill) to find a better solution for that situation. it is often sound to just blast it away, when the opponent is putting pressure on the defenders, instead of trying something that you are not able to!
same goes for the times we have the ball in our own half and play long balls ...
if the defender does not see a simple possibility to play a pass, should he try to dribble past the opponents players until he finds someone he can play the simple pass to ? yeah, that's gonna work ...
NOT for us ...
so when the defender plays the long ball he does then evade the situations where he loses the ball pretty close to our goal and where he is the last line of defense ... it is better for us to probably lose the duell in the attack, because amauri does not get the ball for instance, than having to cope with a quick counter attack, because the opponent gets the ball pretty close to our goal and can just start running at it.